TNAG-1858-FCO40-2633-Legislative-Council-of-Hong-Kong-memoranda-and-minutes-of-me-1989 — Page 231

HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL

19 July 1989

香港立法局

一九八九年七月十九日

118

A recent private survey has shown that some property owners in Hong Kong have blocked off some ventilation outlets of air-conditioning systems to save electricity, and that poor maintenance and irregular cleaning of air-conditioning system is not uncommon. Fortunately, Sir, legionnaire's disease is not yet a threat to Hong Kong. Yet I would suggest that active measures should be considered before it is too late;

(c) The complete lack of consideration of environmental air pollution in the planning of buildings reaches a crescendo in the erecting of hospitals surrounded by industrial buildings. One typical example, the Caritas Medical Centre which, for lack of adequate funding for centralized air- conditioning, has to open its windows for better cross ventilation. These windows unfortunately face directly the full blast of exhaust fans from the surrounding industrial buildings, completely to the detriment of the health of the poor inmates in the hospital. Such fallacies should be acknowledged and addressed, and better integration should be instituted, lest Hong Kong be drowned by its own pollution.

I would like to address another issue which is food pollution and health. Whilst the medical and health executives should be commended for their efforts in containing the spread of infectious diseases, we must not lose sight of the fact that food pollution is responsible for one of our major medical problems, that is, hepatitis. In two recent separate surveys done in the Princess Margaret Hospital, 60% of acute hepatitis cases are found to be either due to Hepatitis A or what they call non A, non B hepatitis, both being food-orientated infections.

Sir, all these examples are cited with one purpose in mind, which is, to emphasize the importance of integrated planning. Sir, all the health hazards that I have mentioned will lead to the loss of many manpower hours; they will also lead to substantial costs of treatment of these sufferers. Yet, they are all preventable with better planning and foresight. Not only is prevention always better than cure, but statistics all show that proper planning will be cheaper than managing the after-effects.

Finally, Sir, saving our environment entails not only the efforts of the Administration in planning and establishing the legislation, it also requires the community to take part. Take noise pollution as an example: it took painfully six years to draft and introduce the new noise control legislation, but it will still remain to be seen when employers will provide ear protectors and when employees will respond by wearing them. Here lies the importance of

education.